What should i use to generate and print letters

Question

Hi

im in the process of building a system that generates printed letters (around 1000 a day) that get sent to our customers and was wondering what are some good tools to use for this.

So far i have looked into using Crystal reports and MS Fox pro reporting but find them frustrating to use.

Anyone got any good suggestions? SQL reporting services and/or Word automation any good?

here are my basic requirements
- letters pull certains bits of information from our DB.
- There are a number of conditions on what is displayed on the letter based on how the data looks.
- ideally would like ability to easily edit letter templates. this is for basic changes only (e.g non-db driven parts of a letter). would be cool if it was easy enough that a non-IT person could do it.
- would need to be able to do batch run of around 1000 letters at a time.

Answer 1

Use the mail merge function in Microsoft Word (see description here).
It can be scripted or programmed easily.